BAGHDAD: Attacks, including bombs that exploded in a market near a church in Baghdad, killed at least 44 people across Iraq yesterday, officials said.
The bloodletting comes as Iraq suffers its worst violence since 2008, when it was just emerging from a brutal period of sectarian killings.
“Two roadside bombs exploded in a popular market in Dura, killing 35 people and wounding 56,” interior ministry spokesman Saad Maan said, referring to a religiously mixed south Baghdad area.
Militants frequently attack places where crowds gather, including markets, cafes and mosques, in an effort to cause maximum casualties.
Security officials had initially said that a car bomb targeted the St John church in Baghdad in addition to the market blasts, but Maan, along with a priest from the area and the Chaldean patriarch, all later denied this.
“The attack was against a... market and not a church,” Maan said, while adding that “the targeted area is a mix of Muslims and Christians.”
Archdeacon Temathius Esha, an Assyrian priest in Dura, and Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako both also insisted that the church was not the target.
The US embassy in Baghdad, however, issued a statement condemning attacks in Dura “that targeted Christians celebrating Christmas.”
Other attacks left nine more people dead. North of Baghdad, a bomb exploded under the bleachers at a football pitch, killing four people, among them two police, and wounding 11. Another bombing in south Baghdad killed at least one person and wounded at least three, while gunmen killed three police near Tikrit, north of Baghdad, and bombs on the road between Kirkuk and Tuz Khurmatu, also north of the capital, killed one person and wounded seven.
AFP
